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From ‘Doorstop’ To Desktop To Mobile Device – The Evolution Of Catalogs

For decades, our industry has relied on large ‘doorstop’ catalogs from product manufacturers and distributors, for customers and partners to wade through to find the right solutions. The main issue with this approach was the amount of paper and printing it consumed, plus the fact that the catalog was usually out of date by the time it reached the street.

In recent years, web based catalogs such as CommScope's eCatalogs have enabled much more useful search capabilities to ease the route through all the data, coupled with being real-time to improve accuracy. However it usually meant users were on a PC or laptop to access. With the advent of smart devices, tablets and phones, users want all the features of these electronic catalogs but on the move.

CommScope has created an application, or app, for Apple iPads and iPhones that enables users to quickly find products and solutions. The app, named cCatalog, allows customers to be fully mobile. No longer do they have to be in front of their computers to get product information.

We believe it to be the first of its kind in our industry and even prior to any promotion in the marketplace, close to 250 people have downloaded the app from the online Apple storeas of the end of September. It illustrates the widening use of the web by all types of users.

The app’s Twitter and Facebook functionality enables users to share with others information they find. And the project list feature lets them build a list of products they need for specific projects, similar to a shopping cart feature that other sites have.

This is just the beginning of our foray into the world of mobile apps that will hopefully make it easier to do business with CommScope, so please give us your feedback to help us with this journey.

About the Author

James Donovan

James Donovan is Vice President of the CommScope
Infrastructure Academy. James joined CommScope in 1993 and has held positions
in Sales, Technical, Marketing, Training and Business Development and served
most recently as VP of Digital and Creative Services for CommScope. James
oversees the CommScope Infrastructure Academy, which is CommScope’s partner and
customer training platform. Prior to joining the company, he held positions at
GEC, ITT and Alcatel. He holds a Masters Degree in Engineering and a BSc Honors
degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

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Comments

6 comments for "From ‘Doorstop’ To Desktop To Mobile Device – The Evolution Of Catalogs"

Ron H

Glad to see a move in this direction. I like the idea of marketing and instructional videos. I did experience some buffering problems when attempting to view videos over a 3G connection. The "Narrow Results" looked more like a title bar that a selector button, but once I realized what it was, it proved to be very useful in lessening the time to search for a particular item.

jamesdonovan

Thanks Ron,
We are in process of developing more help tools for this application so apprecaite the feedback.

Ricardo

Nice! Definitively in the right direction. I would love to have this app for BB...

Situl Shah

Hi James,
This a great idea, and helps demonstrate our industry leadership in interacting with all our customers.
I suggest that we should develop more of these Apps for other mobile platforms, e.g. Android Marketplace, Blackberry App World, Windows Mobile, Amazon Kindle etc to encourage wider use in addition to Apple.
I believe RIM/Blackberry are provided a few free apps to make up for their recent problems and we should provide a version for them quickly as most Enterprises & larger organisations still use these devices as a standard.
More similar innovations please!
Thanks
Situl

jamesdonovan

We will be monitoring the market and ease of development for other platforms, and will of course let you know if it can be achieved in a reliable way.
Many thanks